Lets go on a wild ride through some changes in the earning structure of IHG Rewards in Intercontinental hotels outside the US, learn about some changes at First2Board, enjoy more posts doing satire, learn about the horribly non successful conclusion on the Kickstarter for flying Etihad Residence class, travel to some amazing beaches and a church almost buried by lava, learn about some everyday life facts, MTO, a suitcase that doubles as a scooter, retirement myths and check out the awesome TBB dog mascots (not true but they sure look good!).

TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order

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Hiking in the mountains over Lake Louise. Fairmont LL down below

Finally, ALL Intercontinental hotels will earn 10 IHG Rewards points per $ hotel folio spend. It was about time to get all non US IC hotels away from the currently pathetic earning structure of just 2,000 points per stay. Amazing this managed to stay like this for so long! Finally, sanity prevailed!

First2Board finally brings in some new bloggers after Wallet Slot!Top Travel Tips, RoadWarriorWay, Dispatches from Abroad (by Hao Tran). They appear to be pure travel blogs and look pretty good actually. I actually like the stuff by Wanderlusty, some interesting travel destinations. At the same time, Travelblawg and Will Run for Miles are leaving to go back to Boarding Area fold. I just report the news

As Mile Nerd has noted, there appears to be more satirical content in the blogosphere, which is GREAT news! Matt at Saverocity posted a parody on the SPG card promo “ALERT ALERT – THERE IS AN AMAZING (SPG) DEAL HERE“. Biggest and baddest (is this a word?) arrow you will ever see, MMS is jealous! So, commenters compete to win the referral and some are hilarious! We get Nigerians, poets, TPG impersonators and more. It’s a hoot.

One Mile at a Time was not successful raising the funds to fly Etihad and its new ridiculous “The Residence” class. Frankly, I am surprised. A reader sent me the email Ben sent out doing a final push a day before expiration. Yes Ben it was a ridiculous idea from the start. But you got some major PR out of it. If 10% of these readers got a Chase Ink Bold you made out like a bandit. Now go buy the darn ticket and spare us all the “I know this is ridiculous but…” lame excuses. Here is the thread on FlyerTalk. There are some entertaining comments by Delta Points attacking my anger (I think) and my ridiculous Amazon link. Let’s move on.

Oopsie, we were a little off getting money from others for a product I can afford myself, especially after a good week pumping Chase Ink links! Found here

New Chase Ink Bold card is coming for my wife. I guess I may need to reevaluate my Wal Mart statement above lol.

I am excited about the World Cup. Bummed I am not going but I just can’t afford to take the time off and the games of Greece are way too far from my brother’s Sao Paulo home. Oh well, I like my TV ritual by the way. Blogging may go down.

I am still on track to post my mega rant sometime on Tuesday morning (or very late Monday night). The Chase Ink deadline induced post frenzy is over so I finally stopped entering the headlines and decorating them with my always deeply insightful commentary

Great idea I hear there is a plugin that produces links by just typing a word. This is how the mega pumper bloggers must be dropping 40 affiliate links in one blog post. I asked for it. I have been ignore. That’s okay

I agree with the MP reassignment. I too gave her a wider path for a while but her usable content has fallen to very little, and the pumping is continuous. She’s also started excusing the card pushing with Gary’s “It’s what my readers want” type logic. Indeed they do.

I have not followed DP blog, or his/her travails here or elsewhere. But I did read a couple of his/her recent FT posts. Is English a second language here? I loved the link to the cartoon on how to use an apostrophe properly-every little bit helps.

Thanks for the link to George. I will be in Spain/Southern France in 2 weeks, so I’m looking forward to going to some World Cup viewing parties in the city centers
Want me to get you an Espana jersey??

We just don’t know. It’s like predicting the price movement in individual stocks lol.

I feel for the Brazilian players, so much expected of them! If they go early…this World Cup may turn into an angry mayhem. There is a LOT of underlying anger by the people looking for an excuse to let it all out!

Not sure why it took you so long on MP (you were the same with MMS), but glad you finally came to your senses

No blogger moreso “discovered” the Club Carlson card when it first started paying affiliate commission, and no blogger moreso tries to pretend to be someone they aren’t. If you said 5% of her blog posts related to family/young child travel, I would take the under. And the rare times she does write something relevant to the supposed mission of her blog, it is usually just to use them as pawns to push credit cards

Buzz, A comment on the USAir flight that had to land because of dog poop made me laugh. Matt is right, these Flight Attendants nowadays are getting lazy. In the old days a couple of dog poops didn’t stop us. We’d scoop it up with safety demo cards, empty every bag of coffee grinds over it, throw some cologne over it, cover it with a blanket and spray the cabin with air freshener. It was also common to deal with people having contagious vomiting during turbulence. One would start throwing up and then everyone else around would smell it and they would throw up. Landing was not an option………………..Here is another of my boring f/a stories (feel free to delete if too boring), this one is about a famous Hollywood Celerity that asks f/a Ramsey to join the Mile High Club during a flight. Just my luck, it’s not as good as that sounds…..I had actor Van Johnson ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Johnson) known for films The Caine Mutuny and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, on the flight I was working f/c from JFK-CDG section. He came on wearing a long black cape and fedora, and wearing a good amount of makeup. When I greeted him he gave me a European style kiss on both cheeks as I took his cape away. Hey I’m not uptight about that stuff, I was surrounded by it with my friends and coworkers. But I was surprised how this star of so many World War 2 movies that I loved was so flamboyant in real life. He made Liberace (Buzz’s favorite artist) look macho. After a good time interacting on the flight, he ask me to join him in the lav during the movie. When I told him my wife was the girl working the other aisle in f/c he almost wet his pants laughing.

Steve incorrect assumption which seems typical of your style. there are no Chicago seminar speakers that have volunteered at this point. Just people willing to help. You might learn something by following their lead.

I am not adding fuel to the fire. My post tomorrow may be more than enough. Crap, I haven’t had a chance to work on it today. Oh god, maybe a long night. Should I pump my Amazon link at the top and the bottom this time? I think it is worth it. And justify the FT outbursts against me by Delta Points for pimping my Amazon link so much LOL.

I didn’t actually bother reading the post, but did want to highlight the LOLedness of there being a Barclays arrival affiliate link in the 2nd sentence of a post titled “United Award Chart vs. LifeMiles Award chart”

And that nowhere in a post of what I assume is talking about racking up United miles and Avianca miles is a single United or Avianca earning credit card…. only Arrivals

Am I the only one who feels OMAT is taking a bit too much heat over the kickstarter thing? He said up front that it was ridiculous. I actually donated $10 to him. The only reason I did that was because he has answered a dozen or so silly questions for me in the past. I didn’t do it because I cared about his cause (I don’t give a f*** about Etihad residence or whatever it’s called, much less to read about it), but I did it because I appreciated his help in the past. I don’t click affiliate links (I’m smarter than that, thanks TBB!) so this was one way I could give back. By the way, I never received this “email” as mentioned, maybe it was sent to donors of higher amounts? Not so sure I would’ve appreciated that touch. Maybe that’s why folks are so pissed? I just donated a small amount and forgot about it, I actually thought highly of him for not mentioning anything on his blog in almost a month. Figured he knew it was silly the whole time or something and never took it seriously. Anyway, that’s enough. Looking forward to your epic rant George! Add me to the list of people who are sick of all the bullsht. I miss the days when we were all talking about our passion for travel!

The way he presented it really rubbed me the wrong way. “I could never afford it…” He could. He makes well into the 6 figures. He’s spent well over $1k a night at a hotel multiple times. The phony modesty and phony pauperness rubbed me the wrong way…

And that last email! “I feel bad about asking for money – but can you ask your friends to give me money… But I really am only doing this for you guys”.

James, thanks for your response. I think he could have picked his words a bit more carefully for sure and likely wishes he had done so in this instance. Lucky probably could afford it, so could a lot of us, but I’d rather have something to show for my 20k investment LOL. He probably felt the same way and didn’t choose his words correctly in my opinion. From what I suspect about his audience, I think many (not me though) would have enjoyed the read and thus I think that’s where he was coming from. So I can’t fault him for that. As for the part about the email, if true, it is unfortunate. As I said above I never received one, and I donated.

I wrote about that when he first posted it. I think I said it was a brilliant move! And it has been PR wise. Probably brought many new viewers and if only 10% got a Chase Ink card.

The email was fine. It was only the last day, he could have been pumping the emails more. As James has mentioned, the way it came off just really turned off lots of people. He is a smart kid, he ‘ll learn from it. Very innovative. I am thinking about kickstarteri-ng my own projects too!

I ought to talk more about my passion for travel in the weblogs which I write.

I have hundreds of photographs of my travels to Slovenia, Argentina, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Malaysia, Uruguay, Croatia, Panama, Liechtenstein, Thailand, Great Britain, the Bahamas, the United States and other countries from over the years. George already said that he was interested in my photographs of the Presidential Palace in Romania. I just never wrote about them because I did not think anyone would be interested — but perhaps I should start writing for myself at times.

As you know I love Yomadic’s travel blog posts. There are so many pure travel blogs out there but so many of them are either sponsored trips, bunch of lower than average pictures and just not interesting destinations. Don’t get me started with first class and luxury hotel reviews, yuck! So, I think there is always room for REALLY good travel posts.

I love quirky places. so the Bucharest Presidential Palaces is something I would love to see. The Paris Vendome or Lufthansa First Class or Lufthansa Frankfurt First Class Terminal with ducky pics is something I would rather not see another one as long as I live!

All the trip reports I have written were done by me for my family to look back years later and remember the memories. They are not meant for my blog readers. I use them to maintain my travel expertise aura all around me haha. I have more in a private blog which unfortunately I do not have much time to update anymore.

+1 on Wanderlusty. I lobbied to get Jon on the site (I had to lobby Jon, F2B was on board right away) and love both his take (the stuff about being gay in Russia was killer) and his photos. So glad he’s getting a wider audience. Deserves a spot on the “blogs I like” list, IMHO.

When I was young, there used to be a TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Sitting in the living room with my family, we’d watch things that would seem crazy and barely imaginable. In the past five years of this game, I’ve had over the top experiences. I’ve slept in the Presidential Suite of a major Chicago hotel. I’ve taken a 3 year old roller blading in Tiananmen Square. I’ve watched penguins on the beach in South Africa. I’ve stood alone in Kim Il-Sung Square. To my parents and a lot of the people from my childhood, I live fantasy.
OMAAT is even more over the top, but I’m pretty sure Mr. Schlappig understands it won’t last forever. It’s a fantasy blog, and that’s fine with me.

Whenever I stay in a Fairmont I feel guilty for living it up and hope my kids do not think they deserve it. I make the point “If it was not for the points/miles we would NEVER pay for this”. I hope they understand

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